For those of us who ride the commuter rails and subways daily, Saturday night’s mass stabbing on a London-bound train is a nightmare brought to life. In such confined and well-lit spaces, there isn’t any way to do what the experts say you should: run, hide and, as a last resort, fight.
A train car moving at high speed with the doors and windows closed is a violent psychopath’s dream—a veritable barrel full of unarmed, unsuspecting fish. Most of us have our heads buried in our phones, our ears distracted by music or podcasts. Some of us are poring over newspapers or dreamily watching the countryside fly by. Rarely do any of us do a threat assessment of those nearby. We are in our own little in-between place—not home, not at work. En route. Vulnerable.
We don’t yet know the motive or circumstances behind the U.K. stabbing spree. Police detained two men after the train stopped in a town near Cambridge. British authorities, tight-lipped as usual, are emphasizing that they don’t think it’s terror-related. But the public can be forgiven for speculating that it might be. The U.K. has a growing problem with home-grown and foreign-born terrorism. Last month’s ramming and stabbing attack outside a Manchester synagogue remains fresh.
For New Yorkers of a certain vintage, this weekend’s incident calls to mind Colin Ferguson’s 1993 shooting rampage on the Long Island Rail Road. The paranoid and delusional Mr. Ferguson, then 35, opened fire on a car full of 80 passengers riding an evening train into New York City, killing six and wounding 19. Over the course of three bloody minutes, he emptied a 15-shot clip and managed to reload his 9mm pistol as terrified riders scrambled for the other side of the car. Mr. Ferguson shot many victims in the head, execution style, as he walked backward up the train’s aisle. He was in the process of reloading a second time when a group of men tackled and subdued him.
Survivors described a chaotic scene. “I got up to run, but the aisle was jammed with someone,” Kevin Zaleskie, a financial analyst, told the New York Times. “I didn’t think I was going to get out. I was very panicky. I ducked back down in the seat. The guy was moving in my direction, shooting again.” One rider said that when the train finally stopped, he leapt from a window and ran all the way home.
Mr. Ferguson’s trial became a legal and media circus. His radical lawyers, William Kunstler and Ron Kuby, cooked up an initial defense of “black rage.” Mr. Ferguson, who was born in Jamaica, was carrying scraps of paper with what police described at the time as “racist jottings” against whites and Asians. Mr. Ferguson fired his legal team and ended up defending himself. He ultimately claimed that he had been framed, the real killer was a white man, and that the 15 eyewitnesses who identified him in court were lying. A jury convicted Mr. Ferguson in February 1995 and sentenced him to 315 years in prison.
If there were a way to ensure that train travelers wouldn’t become the victims of the murderous rampage of a madman like Mr. Ferguson, somebody would have come up with it by now. Banning guns won’t do it, unless we’re also going to ban knives, axes, hammers, and baseball bats. Vigilance may be the only option for commuters stuck inside what amounts to an oversized beer can traveling at high speed on an electrified track. Stand clear of the closing doors, but keep your eyes and ears open. Your life may depend on it.
Mr. Hennessey is an opinion editor at the Journal.
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